And The World Turns

This year's November blogging activities have been fun, but it is time to move on. 30 consecutive posts each -- times 4 bloggers -- is a lot of creative juice.  Not to mention all of the creative comments.  Often they were the best part.

A new season is upon us. Holiday decorations are popping up all over town, in restaurants, and on my neighbors lawns.

Good job.

Where I Keep Bike Stuff

There's a lot of gear involved in biking. I'll be the first to admit that I have way more than I need, though each and every piece of it was carefully considered when it was acquired. Obviously, to call myself a biker, I need a few bikes. Here's the boss of the stable, Ruby. She sits in a room all by herself, and everyone calls that room the bike room.

There are two more bikes that I keep indoors, in the closet that the house plans refer to as the "mechanical room."  The Elite and the Bianchi.  These bikes don't get ridden much currently, but they've both been ridden a lot over time.  They've accumulated more than 20,000 miles between the two of them.  There is a pail with bike rags in that closet, an extra bike stand, and a fender.  I do have a few more bikes -- a winter bike in the garage at the bay house that hasn't been ridden for about 2 years, and two bikes in Florida.  Three if you count the old junker that sits in the corner of the garage.

I keep bicycle clothing items in this stand in the same room as Ruby.  On the right, top to bottom baskets, are shirts, shorts, and miscellaneous head gear -- balaclavas and such.  On the left is the helmet space, underwear (socks and sports bras), with tights in the bottom cube.  The tire pump is in the corner, and most of the water bottles are under the sink.  Bike tools and lube go in the drawers, along with most of my gloves.

This is the same closet where the Elite and the Bianchi are kept.  Not all of this is bike gear -- I can see six or seven things that are general purpose, and even two things belonging to my partner, JB.  (His stuff is scrunched up against the wall on the left.)  It's mostly jerseys and vests, with a couple of jackets.

Bike shoes are under a table which is under the jerseys.  On the shelves there are a few extra helmets, and a backpack that I once thought I'd use while biking.

On the wall next to the Bianchi and the Elite is a bike rack that I've never actually used to store a bike.  But I could, if I wanted to.  The satchel on the left is full of bicycle bandanas.  I rarely wear bandanas any more, but there was a time when I had a bandana to match each of my bike jerseys.  Really. The musette on the right does not currently have anything in it -- it's more on the order of wall art, though it is perfectly functional.  And cool.

I almost didn't count this -- this is the linen closet in the laundry room.  It currently has a pair of wind pants, a pair of windstopper tights, and a long sleeve bike jersey hanging in it.  Not much, really.

We have a bedroom that the COTU refer to as the bedroom of desolation, since it isn't used regularly by anyone.  The closet in there catches odd stuff, like the vacuum cleaner, and a bunch of jerseys that I don't  wear much any more.

This is most of what I have here, plus some bits and pieces lying around on the dryer and similar places.  (I won't get into what's in the attic.)  While looking for a pair of gloves to wear on my bike ride today (Yay!), I came across a list of the bike gear that I have in Florida.  Fortunately for my dearly beloved readers, NaBloPoMo is nearly over, and you won't be subjected to that list.

28 down, 2 to go

Some November days I head out the door for some exercise mostly because it will give me something to blog about. Today was one of those days.  Someplace new for my hour of sweat sounded good. (I read an article about a study done in Denmark.  People who slow jog for 1 hour every day live forever.  Or something like that.)

The beech woods is a place that I've always loved in the fall. The fairgrounds is a good starting and ending point for a loop through that part of the township. There is a dirt path from the dog park back to the bike path along Post, so I started there.

I don't think these grasses along the Lake Mac shore are native, but they are attractive this time of year. From there I looped through Winstrom Park near Perry and 160th. It looks okay from this vantage point, but the city fathers decided that the pine trees that had been there forever needed to be removed, so the rest of the park looks pretty ugly.

The last mile and a half back to my truck was mostly along Ottawa Beach Road -- not normally my favorite route, but it was fairly quiet today. As I approached the Fairgrounds at the end of my loop, there was a police car parked near the entrance with an officer pointing a radar gun in my general direction. It made me laugh. I considered stopping and asking him how fast I was going.  3.55 miles, plus .3 miles of warm up and cool down.  Close enough.

More on How to Tie Your Shoes

After Mr. Moohoo's lesson yesterday on how to tie a shoe, I almost hate to mention the problem I've been having with my shoes lately. It involves a flawed approach to tying my shoes. It seems like a puny issue compared to having reached near-senility without learning how to properly tie my shoes. It is also a fact that this is at least the third time that these shoes have been on the blog. Seems excessive. But it's late November, so I'm going with what I've got. Here's the photo. Notice what's wrong? Know why? I'll pause for a minute, then continue beneath the photo.

I've done this multiple times now.  The problem is the off center tie, of course. The "why" part is a little less obvious. Apparently I think I am going for a bike ride in these shoes. When tie shoes are worn on a bike, it's good to tie the bow on the side away from the drive train and other moving parts. And tuck in all the ends. Amen.

I biggened this photo because I like it.  I took a walk down the beach this afternoon, and noticed that we are at the time of year when it is possible to take photos with the camera pointed at the sun.  So here's a photo of Mother Nature bestowing her blessing on our breakwater and light house.  Or something.  During the half hour or so that I was on the beach, I was the only one on the beach.  Either direction, as far as I could see.

New Material

Thanks, fellow bloggers, for your suggestions.  Beaches, beeches, archives, never give up, and end of month round-up are all good topics.  I didn't mean to imply that I was giving up, just that I was out of material.  So today I had to round some up.  There have been a number of food posts this month, so the soup I made this morning fits right in.

A lot of leftovers went into the soup, but no turkey.  It's vegetarian -- carrots, celery, onion, garlic, tomatoes,  green bean casserole and sweet potatoes.  Used up the relish tray and a few other leftovers.   A big bowl of this with some peanut butter toast fueled a quest to find a beach, other than the one outside my door. (Which will likely appear at least one more time.)

The water levels are low here, too.  It's more pronounced on Lake Mac -- at least to my eye. This was my turn around spot, at the water -- just the way I like my exercise.  By the way, snow flurries.  Nothing like what TT and PW had in the piney north woods, but it is still too chilly for me to bike.  The roads are clear though, so it may still be a possibility.

I paused long enough to inspect this sign.  From a distance (the road) it looked like it said, NO DOGS, DOG ON LEASH.  That seemed confusing to me, so I had to bushwhack my way through the dune grass so that I could get close enough to see the arrows.  No dogs to the west, dog on leash to the east.  I am so confident of finishing out NaBloPoMo, that I used three of the 5 bloggable photos that I took today.
Late edit:  I was curious about how much soup I had for lunch today, so I checked and that is a 5" bowl.  (Diameter)  Since the volume of a sphere is 4/3 times pi times the radius cubed, and that bowl is about 1/3 of a sphere, that comes out to about 16 cubic inches.  Since we all know that one cup is 14.43 cubic inches, I ate a little bit more than a cup of soup for lunch.  Useful.

Slow Sunday

The weeping beech tree has finally given up and dropped its leaves.  Dave and his crew were here last week to do the fall leaf clean up.  I think I'll just let the wind take care of these, or not.

It was mild enough to get outside for about an hour, but I didn't take any photos.  (This one is a day or two old.)  I've officially run out of blogging material.

Slog, Wog, Log, Blog

Two days in a row?  I've avoided that until now, preferring to give myself plenty of recovery time as my muscles and joints adjust to a different set of stresses. Today I headed out into the wind, ready to switch to brisk walking if it seemed prudent. But it was too cold to spend much time walking, so I ended up logging 2.9 miles of mostly wogging with an additional .7 miles of warm up and cool down.  That's far enough to take me to this point--

 This is the end of James Street, quite literally.  Street ends that end at public water are public parks here, but very few of them have been developed to accommodate public use of them.  Including this one.  There's very little off street parking, and the trail is up and over a sand dune.  I'm not a trail runner, so this is one of those places that I walked.  I do like a turn around spot with a view.  And -- the view when I turned around was:

Well, maybe next time I'll stop at the top of the dune.  I saw no bikers during my exer-slog, but boy, there are a gazillion runners out there every time I'm out.  What's the deal with that?  (Side bar to Emily:  There is nothing wrong with mall walking, it's just not my thing.  Rather like trail running.  And I'll let you decide if these photographs are more interesting than some of the scenes I've seen on TV of Black Friday shoppers.)

Taking a Sharp Turn Towards Winter

For those of us whose metabolisms don't handle carbs particularly well, the day after Thanksgiving is a work day. As in "work it back down" or "work it off." I am in that category, so even though the radar looked like this:

and the temperature was 32 degrees, and there was a WNW wind blowing at 21, gusting to 41.... I headed outside for some exercise.  It was pretty clearly not a biking day, but I have a back up plan that I've been training for for a couple of months now.  The gear:  AmFib Pearl Izumi tights.  Windstopper, fleece lined.  Perfect.  Two wicking layers, one of them UnderArmor Heat -- similar to Smartwool, I think.  Perfect.  A windbreaker jacket.  Wool hat, neck gaitor, fat gloves.  It all worked, I was always warm enough, never too warm.  My current favorite route goes south along Lakeshore, then through the neighborhoods to the marina area along Ottawa Beach Road.

The clanging of the lines on the sailboats drew me to the waters edge for this photo of the tall masts against the heavy, dark grey sky.  It wasn't snowing much at this point -- a few flurries.  What the locals call graupel.  I didn't bring a watch with me on purpose.  (I enjoy wogging a lot more when I'm not constantly calculating my speed.)  I just wanted to log some miles and spend some time outdoors.

I did re-learn a valuable lesson today.  Head out into the wind.  The wind gusts blowing ice crystals in my face on the last unsheltered stretch back towards the lake were most unwelcome.  Still, I did what I set out to do, and had a pretty enjoyable time in the process.  Taking my camera was a plus.  So was leaving my watch at home.  I'm still very much a novice at this, but if it prevents the dreaded mall walking, I'll call it a success.

Grandmother's House

My turkey addled brain is -- turkey addled.  The dishes are washed and put away, as is the food, with lots of help from OSLO and some from the COTU.

OSLO's crew has moved on to spend the evening with the other side of their family.  It was another fine Thanksgiving Day.

Dome and Glome

I heard on the Intertubes that today was the last day of bicycling season. Weather Underground holds out hope for maybe a couple more bikeable days here next week, but the last week of November is definitely pushing the season. A dense fog advisory is in effect here, making photography a little pointless. In fact, these
are the only two photos I took today.

 Fog doesn't photograph well, but it never got too thick to see or be seen. And at 50 degrees, it was warm enough, though dampish. I didn't see any other bikers while I was out, which tends to make me feel hard core. The high point of the ride was when I was standing along  Post Avenue admiring the beech woods when I got showered with the last of the leaves from the tree that I was standing under.  If this was the last ride of the season, that was a nice way to end it.

Russ' made our pies for tomorrow, so after I got back from my ride I drove down and picked them up. As I was walking back to my truck, the sun finally broke through the fog.  I took it as a sign that Mother Nature was blessing my choice of pies.  (Reasonable, right?)  Sadly, by the time I got west of Van Wieren's hardware store, the fog bank was back.  The wind is starting to pick up, so it should break up before OSLO's crew gets out on the road tomorrow.

Dessert -- a little bit of history

We spent our first Thanksgiving at the beach house last year.  I'm hoping I can find those place mats -- the photo proves that they're here somewhere.

OSLO has a keen appreciation for pie, an attitude similar to my own. If one piece is good, two will be twice as good.  With whipped cream, please.

The granddaughter is not, and never has been, a fan of pie. (I know, hard to believe.) So she brought her own dessert last year -- leftover cake from her brother's birthday.  This year there will be two pies, one pumpkin and one rhubarb, for six people.  One of whom never eats pie, and another one who prefers mashed potatoes and gravy as a second course. This could pose a problem.

Monday Slump

Warm but cloudy.  Getting outside for an hour or so didn't require multiple layers, happily.

Even the fairly nice weather didn't provide me with much motivation today, but I did need to burn off some of yesterday's excess calorie intake. Pedestrian speed lets me see things that I miss on my bike, much like biking speed lets me see things that I miss driving past them.

That's about it. Today was mostly about making lists for Thanksgiving dinner, checking my pantry for ingredients and negotiating with OSLO about who was going to make which dish.  It will be a smallish group around the table this year, so we're trying to pare down the menu a little bit.  I think we have a plan.

A Bike Ride, A Bridal Shower and A Birthday

By the time Lynne called to ask if I wanted to take a bike ride, I was already home from one. It was as nice a day as we ever see here in mid November, so I got out early. With other things to do and places to be, early was the only option. I rode a couple of loops, one to the north and another to the south. The one to the south skirted this lake for a while.

Today was my Grandson's 14th birthday.  (There are lots of nice photos on OSLO's blog.)  It was also Brad's daughter Mallory's bridal shower, so to avoid conflicting schedules, OSLO had their family party for TJ last night.  He had some friends over as well, so a Saturday celebration worked fine for him.

At the shower this afternoon there was the standard bathroom tissue wedding dress, designed and built by Mallory's young (female) cousins.  These types of parties tend to be girls/women only -- I won't speculate why.  In this photo (below) we are all looking at the back of the candy bar wrappers for .... oh, really.  I'm not going to describe shower games.  (Left to right, TJ's sister, cousin, aunt, grandmother and mother.)

After the shower, TJ's other grandmother also joined us all for another celebration of TJ's birthday -- dinner at TJ's restaurant of choice,  Wild Chef.  We ate too much and discussed how our joint grandchildren were no longer children, and she reminded me once more that we are both older than Tupperware.  (Look it up, it's true.)   That's a lot of activity for me for one day.  Fortunately, it was all good.

November Warm Up

Jimi did some research on the meaning of the initials ORV on the "No Hunting" sign I posted yesterday. Mystery solved, it stands for "Off road vehicle" in Michigan, according to the DNR site.  (Thanks, TT.) I suppose that someone who owns an off road vehicle might know what ORV means, but I had never heard of it.  I love a good acronym, as you all probably know, but even I think that there should be a line somewhere.  Even TWC (The Weather Channel) got in on the game this morning.  One guy's forecast was for MOTS.  (More of the same.)  Too much, I say.  Too much.

Speaking of the Weather Channel, it took a while to warm up today from a frosty start.  It was 41 when I left the house around noon, but it warmed quickly during the hour or so I was out, and it was a balmy 48 when I returned.  It was a familiar route, mostly downhill to Lake Macatawa, then the return trip back up from the waterfront.

The "back up" part has this hill on it.  I've found that turning the camera sideways makes hills look longer and steeper, by the way. My new gear worked perfectly.  It is slowly dawning on me that insulating layers are for biking, wicking layers are for wogging.  The sales guy at Gazelle suggested that if it is cold, to wear two wicking layers under the hoodie I bought yesterday.  Plus the hoodie is also a wicking layer.  It appears to be all about moisture management.

Wheels and Gears

The only drawback to riding today was that it is day two of firearm deer season.  I usually try to stay away from woods and fields and such this time of year, which means staying south of Riley where the houses are all pretty close together.  I ventured a little further north than that -- sort of accidentally -- and was reminded of the season by this sign.  It says "Caution, kids camping.  No hunting or DRV", (or maybe it says ORV, I can't really tell.)  The Michigan deer population has been hit hard by a nasty sounding disease called  Epizootic Hemmorrhagic Disease.  The link is to the Michigan DNR, but fair warning -- there are some gruesome pictures there.  I'm not a deer hugger, and have been known to refer to them as vermin, but this sounds like something no one would wish on anything.

The weather today was mild, and it was good to get in some bike miles this late in the year.  My story for the day comes from Monday's practice wog.  It was cold and very windy -- not a fit day for outdoor exercise.  My wog log says 37 degrees with a west wind at 20.  Raw enough that I dressed in my yellow Gore windstopper jersey over a couple of layers. Oddly enough, a match for the one worn by Mr. MooHoo in this post by Emily, third photo down.  It's an excellent choice for outdoor exercising in fairly chilly weather, but it does have three pockets in the back, a dropped tail, and is quite obviously intended for bicycling.  It worked great, but as I walked back towards the house at the end of my wog I met my neighbors driving the other direction.  Bob rolled down the window on his car and asked, with great concern, "what happened to your bike?"  So this afternoon I headed down to Gazelle Sports, what passes for a running store here, and bought myself a new piece of gear.  It's not the least bit bikey, and I am hopeful that I will no longer look like someone who has lost her bicycle.

Half Way Point

Today marks the 15th day of the 30 days of NaBloPoMo, so half way. My go-to post on quiet days is to walk to the bottom of my stairs, wander down the beach a ways, and take a picture. Here's what it looked like today.

I spent a number of hours today doing the dreaded round trip to Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids for the imaging procedure that is considered necessary to be assured that I am still on track for living forever. The radiologist declared me to be 'unchanged' from 6 months ago -- exactly the news that I hoped for. When I got home I ate lunch then took a rare nap to compensate for the inevitable sleepless night that always comes before one of these things. The walk on the beach was just a bonus.

First 5K Report

There's an old story that Dad used to tell. It was short, thankfully, and went something like this.  "Come forth, said the King.  But I tripped over a camel turd and came in fifth."  That, in a nutshell -- minus the camel turd part -- is how my 5K went this afternoon.  I came in 5th of 10.  (It occurs to me that nutshell is just another way of saying nut case.) The photo below is of what remained of   my C25K group by the end of the program.  I clearly had the coolest shoes. (Our coach is third from the right.)

It was still cold at noon when we gathered outside of the Dow Center at the college. My car said 39 degrees. The winds were less than 10 mph -- not much of a factor.  It definitely helped to have previewed the course, though it was well marked at all the turns.  I hit the first four lights on red, as I had anticipated.  A water stop had been set up for us as we left the Window on the Waterfront park, a bit over half way.   The first three runners -- and yes, they were clearly running -- covered the course in about 31 minutes.  You might even  be able to pick out which ones they were -- the youngest and fittest.  The rest of us trailed in over time.  There weren't many spectators, as you might expect.  The cold might have had something to do with that -- a few family members and a few colleagues showed up to cheer on their favorites.  I got a nice piece of paper with my time on it, although there was no recognition that I had won my age classification.  I met all of my goals -- I finished, I didn't hurt myself and I didn't come in last.  41:44

Still Waiting for Snow -- Thankfully

The air filled with snow flurries for a time last night, but the ground was bare when I got up this morning.  It was certainly cold enough to snow, and I hauled out my winter coat before I went shopping today. Walking around Best Buy, Meijers and Dunham's Sports was all the exercise I got today. I have a weekend coming up like Emily had last week -- a wedding shower and a birthday dinner, and I had gifts to guy.

Tomorrow is the 5K that I've been blogging about for a while now. I have a few goals that I thought I'd share. #1. Finish  #2. Don't hurt myself  #3. Don't come in DFL (dead flat last). If #2 and #3 are incompatible, I'll choose #2. As for time, my original hope was 45 minutes, since that's my best unofficial time for a 5k around my neighborhood. Having pre-wogged the course, I've adjusted that to 48 minutes, to allow time for traffic lights and such. Wish me luck.

Weeping Beech

Here's my take on our weeping beech tree. It may be weepy, but it is not wimpy. Unlike those ash trees that give up early, our beech tree is hanging on to its leaves after most other trees have given theirs up completely. The first photo was taken November 1, the second one today. It is particularly significant because Dave, our leaf clean up guy, is waiting for the leaves on that tree to fall before he does his fall clean up of our yard. He'd hoped to do it last week. We currently have 30ish mph winds, which may help the process along.

Changing topics, we did our family's observance of Veterans Day yesterday. The girl teenager made her grandfather some of her famous homemade chocolate chip cookies, plus some refrigerator dough sugar cookies. Her brother engaged his grandfather in a discussion of what it was like to be in the army in Germany in 1960, and quizzed him about what his duties were. (They are excellent grandchildren.) We finished the day with dinner out at Applebees, where they were running a "veterans eat free" special deal. The waitress made a fuss over us for having a veteran with us, which he maybe, sorta, kinda appreciated. OSLO got to tell the waitress the story about how her Dad was in the army at the same time that Elvis was, even in the same country, and how at the time her Dad looked just like Elvis.  She loves that story. 

I believe that today is the official observation of Veterans Day, so I plotted a route that took me past a cemetery where I've stopped before to contemplate the number of graves with flags and brass markers. It was too cold and I was too lightly dressed to stop for long today, and I took no photos.  It was a short 'wog' -- about 2.6 miles.  The conventional wisdom that says that my speed will naturally increase over time appears to be wrong, and I'm still averaging just under 15 minutes per mile.  The good news is that conventional wisdom also says that it is nearly impossible to hurt myself at that pace.  Let's hope they're right about that, at least.

Tied for Third

With the wind gusting up to 30 mph from the south, we chose to go north to avoid flying sand and small puppies from being blown in our faces.

It was a simple plan -- down the beach, though the tunnel and back up the street inland.  Note that everyone is wearing sunglasses and sensible shoes.  It was close to 60 degrees, and we needed to take advantage of a most un-November like day.

At the tunnel I asked the teenagers to put some action in their poses, so they began attacking each other.  Siblings!  At first glance there is no lake view in this photo because of the glare, then I noticed the reflection of the lake on the wall of the tunnel.

The brother-sister competition continued at the top of the hill on the return trip.  TJ took off running, his sister chased him, and OSLO and I broke into a ....  well, we tried to keep up, but quickly gave up.  Young and strong trumps .... just about everything.

The Skies Are Still Cloudy All Day

A slice of warm weather arrived today, and I got in a short bike ride after lunch.  I felt the need to hunt down another party store after this comment showed up on my blog post about 3 weeks ago.  (The Hatch -- the new party store.)  "Yup, you are such a party animal. You know ALL the cool party stores"

This party store is well marked -- the concrete monument at the street, and then there are two signs on the front.  It seems like overkill.  OSLO and COTU were on their way for a visit so I didn't go inside.  I'm relatively certain that they do not serve pigs, however.

I don't ride through the beech woods in the fall as often as I used to before we moved to the beach.  With the old oaks and the young beeches all holding onto their leaves deep into winter, the whole area takes on a brownish tinge from here on.  This last photo brings to mind that old saying, "When you get to a fork in the road, take it."

And Friday Makes Three.

The official recommendation was three sessions of weight bearing exercise per week.  This was number 3,  on my current MWF schedule.  Today's route was the similar to Monday's, but in reverse.  I started out by heading south on Lakeshore, hitting the 1 mile mark about here.  The first mile still seems to be the hardest.

The second mile was mostly along Ottawa Beach Road.  It's fairly quiet there this time of year -- there's not much beach traffic in November.  The 2 mile mark was about where the new party store is located.  I turned back north and west before getting to Anchorage Marina, and slogged up what felt like a pretty good sized hill.  The photo below is of the home stretch along Perry, with Tunnel Park just over the hill to the right.  I was well past the 3 mile mark and getting a little tired by then.

Here's a map of the route.  Note that there are no category 5 hills on it when done in the reverse direction from what I did on Monday.  It's still (net) downhill on the way out, flat in the middle and uphill on the way back -- unavoidable if I go south.  On a related note, I've been looking at running gear on the Internet (there is no category for wogging gear).  A lot of it seems to be made by people named Gore and Pearl Izumi.  I have a lot of gear made by those people, as it turns out.  My theory today was to dress the way I'd dress for a bike ride in temperatures 10 degrees warmer.  Accordingly, I wore a thin wicking base layer and a long sleeve Pearl Izumi bike jersey.  Yep.  Still too warm.  It was 47 when I left, 51 when I returned.

Home Improvement Project (#1 of some.)

The much ballyhooed warm up didn't make it through the overcast skies today.  My regularly scheduled hair appointment lasted past noon, when I gave up on the idea of outdoor exercise and got the necessary items to finish a house project we've been working on for a while -- replacing the old blinds in the great room with cordless blinds.  It's been a couple of years since we've been able to raise the old blinds, and they were overdo for replacement.  It's done, it looks good, we're happy with the results.

I don't really anticipate that there will be a Home Improvement Project (#2), but you never know.